AS a diabetes sufferer and road accident victim, East Lancashire wheelchair-user Hayley Reed depends on taxis for travel, but needs ones that have been adapted for people like her.

Yet so scarce are they in Hyndburn, where she lives, work and studies, that, at times, she has been stranded for more than an hour and a half waiting for one to come

It is not just that it makes life difficult for her as she struggles to arrive on time for hospital appointments, college lectures and her voluntary-work job. For 31-year-old Hayley is afraid that, one day, she will not be able to get back to her Great Harwood home.

But as well as being inconvenient and frustrating, this situation is just not fair. And it highlights the lack of a laid-down common policy on provision of this facility for the disabled.

For while, according to a disabled support group, the problem is one experienced across the country, in some areas there are plenty of cabs that are adapted and fitted with built-in ramps and harnesses to secure wheelchairs properly.

Indeed, while Hyndburn has just eight taxis that have been fully modified for disabled access, in neighbouring Blackburn with Darwen there are 64. And such is the demand for them where they are so scarce, that one operator who has an adapted cab receives so many calls from wheelchair-dependent people that he says he would need five such vehicles in order to cater for them all.

But why are they not all catered for everywhere? Why are there black spots like Hyndburn?

Government regulations designed to ensure that all licensed cabs had wheelchair access by next January has gone into the slow lane and the process is dependent on encouraging operators to have their vehicles adapted.

Clearly, in places like Hyndburn, where the situation is being 'looked into' and where a decision on reviewing the council's policy is due later this month, official pressure needs to be much stronger. And would not the introduction of a policy requiring all taxi licence-holders to acquire adapted cabs when they change vehicles be a turn in the right direction?